var_dump shortcut access in Visual Studio Code

Question

how can I get quick access to var_dump in Visual Studio Code editor? For example: I enter vd letters and after pressing the Enter key I get var_dump("");.

Answer 1

VS Code has a global snippets file, as well as snippet files for each language. You can choose to add the snippet in either one.

Add it to the global file

1) File-->Preferences-->User snippets

2) Select New Global Snippets file

3) Save it as global.code-snippets (or name it anything with the extention code-snippets)

4) Remove everything then paste this in:

{
  "Var_Dump": {
    "prefix": "vd",
    "scope": "php",
    "body": [
      "var_dump($1);",
      "$2"
    ],
    "description": "var_dump"
  }
}

Or Add it to the php file

1) File-->Preferences-->User snippets-->php.json

2) Remove everything then paste this in:

{
  "Var_Dump": {
    "prefix": "vd",
    "body": [
      "var_dump($1);",
      "$2"
    ],
      "description": "var_dump"
    }
}

Usage

Go to a php file (make sure it has opening <?php tag. Type "vd" and hit tab

Not working?

• VS Code says you don't need to restart your editor, however I found this helped.

• Snippets/intellisense can take some time to come up. Wait for the snippet to show up before hitting tab. You are waiting for this:

More info and options can be found on this VS Code help page.

Answer 2

This is a snippet. HERE you can read how to make it.

You can define your own snippets for specific languages. To open up a snippet file for editing, open User Snippets under File > Preferences (Code> Preferences on Mac) and select the language for which the snippets should appear. Snippets are defined in a JSON format and stored in a per user (languageId).json file. For example, Markdown snippets go in a markdown.json file.